Girl
INTHEEND,the hardest part was convincing Mama to let her go to
school.
It was dinnertime when she decided to broach the subject, and
even then, she ran over fivepossible conversation starters before
she decided on the best one.
"Mama," she began as her mother spooned fried rice into her
mouth and grimaced.
"Too salty," Mama said shortly, taking a sip of water.
"Sorry," she said. "So, Mama, I was thinking . . . I'd like to go back
to school tomorrow."
Mama turned sharp eyes on her, peering closely as if trying to
see what was going on inside Suraya's brain. "Is that really wise?
Are you. . . well?" Mama never referred to Pink if she could help it;
she only talked in roundabout ways about Suraya's "episodes," as if
she were a TVseries with neatly portioned out doses of drama, easy
enough to endure as long as her issues only lasted sixty minutes or
less.
"I'm feeling much better," Suraya said, trying to infuse her voice
with as much enthusiasm as she could. "I mean, I've been home for
a few days now, and you know, I haven't been hearing or seeing anything . . . different. . . . I think the rest really helped. And I miss
my friends."
"Hmm." Mama took another mouthful of rice, her face
unreadable. Suraya could smell the familiar scent of Tiger Balm
wafting gently from where Mama had massaged it into her neck and
shoulders to take away the accumulated aches of the day; the
potency of it made her sneeze.
"Please, Mama." She shuffled the rice around her plate, making
patterns out of carrot cubes and chicken slivers. "I think it would be
good for me. Honestly."
It seemed to take years, but finally her mother let out a heavy
sigh. "All right. But the minute anything strange starts to happen,
anything at all, you're coming straight home and I'm calling the
pawang there and then, full moon or no full moon. Got it?"
Suraya felt her heart constrict at the mention of the pawang. "Got
it," shesaid, and they ate the rest of their meal in familiar,
uncomfortable silence.
Jing's face when they met in front of the school the next morning
was alive with exactly the kind of barely suppressed excitement you
might expect from someone about to do something she isn't
supposed to do. "Oh my gooooood, I can't believe we're doing this!"
Her squeal was so loud several girls turned to look at them.
"Shut up, Jing," Suraya hissed, trying her best to look nonchalant.
"Everyone's going to know we're ditching."
In her shirt pocket, Pink sighed and rolled his eyes. You will be
caught before you even makeit five steps away from the school gate
at this rate.
"Youshut up," Jingwhispered to Suraya, her face indignant. "I
can be stealthy, okay? Like aspy, or like . . . like . . . Leia disguised
as a bounty hunter to save Han."
She is speaking in tongues again.
"If we're going to make it through today, you guys really have to
try and get along," Suraya told him sternly.
"Get along?" Jing shot Pink a suspicious look. "Did he say
something about me? What was it? Was it rude? I bet it was rude."
Suraya ignored her and glanced at the gate, where dozens of
girls in varying states of sleepiness were milling through to the hall,
waiting for the school bell to ring. "Come on, let's go."
They began walking briskly in the other direction, heading for the
shops across the street. "Walk with purpose," Suraya said to Jing
under her breath. "If anyone asks, we're just going to go buy some
buns because you forgot your lunch."
"Okay, okay, ya, I know," Jing whispered back. Together they
walked, step by step by step,and the farther away they got from the
school, the more Suraya felt her stomach tighten, expecting to be
caught at any moment.
Instead of heading for the sundry shop, where brightly colored
bouncy bells in net bags hung suspended from hooks over the
entryway and all sorts of sweets clothed in lurid packaging were
displayed in a way calculated to tempt even the most levelheaded
child into parting with her pocket money, they slipped into the little
used alleyway behind the shophouses and pressed their bodies
close against the wall, just as the school bell rang in the distance.
It was the custom for prefects to be stationed at the gate during
assembly, keeping a sharp lookout for fugitives and stragglers. Pink
hopped onto the worn handlebars of a nearby motorcycle and kept
up asteady stream of updates. There is a tall one with metal on her
teeth; long, straight hair; and a way of looking at everyone else as if
they were worms, he supplied.
"Farah," Jing whispered. "She's a form 4 prefect, remember? She
modeled one time for an Insta shop that sells fake handbags
imported from China or wherever, and ever since she's called herself
a model. Carries around a Chanel wallet that she says is real." Jing
snorted. "Someone should tell her Chanel isn't spelled with two l's."
"Shhh," Suraya hissed, looking around nervously. Jing had a
tendency to raise her voice when she got excited. "Who's the other
one, Pink?"
The other girl is stout and has shoulder-length hair that she
wears swept into combs on either side of her head, and a mole at
the corner of her mouth.Hepaused tolisten before continuing.She
seems to take great delight inbarking out orders to smaller students
who have the misfortune of being late.
The two girls exchanged looks. "Bulldog," they whispered at
exactly the same time. Bulldog's real name was Maria; she was
sixteen and believed that if she enforced the school rules to the
letter, she'd have a real shot at being head girl when she was
seventeen. Being head girl was the dream of Bulldog's heart, and
she threw herself into her prefectorial duties with all the enthusiasm
and ferocity of the animal that was her nickname. Being caught by
Bulldog, they knew, would mean a brisk march to the principal's
office and the end of their mission.
"Can't let her catch us," Jingsaid softly, looking as worried as
Suraya felt. Suraya nodded.
And then Jing's phone rang.
The tinny notes of the Imperial March blared through the quiet
morning air like a foghorn. "Stop it, quickly, turn it off!" Suraya hissed
as Jing's eyes widened in panic, and she fumbled to get her phone
out of her pocket. "Why do you even have it with you?! That's
against school rules!"
"YOU try tellingmy mother she can't contact me during the day!
Want me to die is it?"
The stout one is looking this way, Pink said warningly.
"Jing, TURN OFF YOUR PHONE." If a whisper could also be a
shout, Suraya's was a bellow. In her confusion, Jing accidentally
pressed the green Answer Call button, and her mother's shrill voice
wafted through the receiver. "Ah girl? Can you hear me? You forgot
your lunch lah, you need me to bring to you? Hello? Hello?"
"Jing!" Suraya's voice was imploring.
Jing finally managed to locate the button that powered her phone
down and Aunty Soo's voice fizzled into silence.
They waited, holding their breath.
They are conferring,Pink said. They keep looking over here with
puzzled expressions. The tall one is saying, "But there is nobody
there."
A pause. Then Pink: The stout one is walking this way.
Oh no. "Bulldog's coming," Suraya whispered, and Jing shot her
a look of pure despair. Suraya cast around desperately, looking for
somewhere they could hide. But except for the wrappers and
cigarette butts scattered carelessly along the alleyway, there was nowhere to go. Instead, she pressed her body as close to the wall as
it would go and prayed for Bulldog to lose interest and go away.
She is getting closer.
They could hear her now, walking toward where they stood
hidden. Bulldog's steps weredistinctive; she didn't walk so much as
march everywhere she went, the steady thud of herfootsteps
announcing her arrival well before you actually saw her face.
"Maria!" It was the high-pitched voice of their discipline teacher
Mrs. Ng, laced with a generous dose of irritation. "Maria! What ARE
you doing?"
"I heardsomething just now, teacher!" Bulldog yelled back. "I just
wanted to check it out."
"Nonsense! There's nothing there but rubbish and bad smells."
The teacher's sniff carried all the way to where the two girls stood,
their hearts pounding, Bulldog just steps away. "Get back here at
once. Assembly is over, and classes are about to begin."
"Okay, teacher." The reply was grumpy, but Suraya knew Bulldog
would do as she was told. The rules were too important to ignore.
Sure enough, the heavy steps thudded back toward the school,
getting fainter and fainter until they couldn't be heard at all.
They are gone,Pink said at last. It is safe for you to come out
now.
They changed in a scrub of woodland by the shophouses, fishing
their regular clothes out of thebottoms of their backpacks and taking
turns, careful not to glance at each other's bodies for fear of
embarrassing each other (and themselves). Jing had turned her
phone back onas soon as the coast was clear, and it took Suraya
fifteen painful minutes to stop her friend agonizing over how to
respond to her mother("I HUNG UP on her, Sooz, she's going to
KILL ME") andput on the baju kurung Suraya had brought for her
from home and insisted she wear. Jing was fine with this; what she
wasn't fine with was the factthat nothing about it fit the way it was
supposed to.
"These sleeves are too long," Jing moaned, waving her hands so
that the excess material flapped about. "The waist is too big. The sarong is dragging on the floor. I feel like a little kid playing dress
up."
"Stop complaining lah." Suraya reached over and began to fold
Jing's sleeves."Look, see? We fold this up, then we fold at the waist,
it'll be fine. We want people to believe we're sisters, right? And
anyway, it's a sign of respect."
Jing frowned. "Respect of what? A sign to who?"
"When we visit a cemetery. It's a sign of respect to the dead to be
dressed modestly. Right, Pink?"
The ghost shrugged.Ido not know. It sounds like a very human
rule to me.
Suraya looked at him. "Really?" It was a thing she'd been told
almost her entire life, and it unmoored her slightly to hear that it
didn't really seem to matter to a ghost himself.
The dead don't really think about what you're wearing,he said
matter-of-factly. Mostly on account of being dead.
"Well, whatever the ghost thinks, I don't have any other clothes,
so unless the dead are okay with me being naked, this is what we're
going with," said Jing.
The dead definitely do not want that.
"I'm not sure the living want that either," said Suraya.
Jing sighed noisily. "I may not be able to HEAR him, but I KNOW
when you two are making fun of me, okay?!"
They walked to the bus station in town, keeping close to walls and
shadows when they could and trying to be as inconspicuous as
possible.
Inside, the little building was stifling; the walls bore flaking off
white paint, travel posters peeling at the corners, and an aging air
conditioning unit that groaned and belched out stale gusts of air
every couple of minutes. Jing had booked their seats online, so all
they had to do was find theright counter and collect their tickets.
Still, they couldn't risk getting sloppy, not when they were so close.
"Let me do the talking," Suraya said, shifting her backpack so that
it sat more evenly on her shoulders. Jing still had the highly excitable
look of exactly what she was: a kid skipping school.
"Okay," she said agreeably.
They walked up to the counter, where a bored-looking woman in
a pink headscarf tapped away at a game on her phone. Technicolor
shapes beeped and boopedand erupted in explosions of rainbow
pixels as Suraya stood and waited to be acknowledged.
"Excuse m—"
"Wait ah." The woman held up one finger, her eyes still glued to
her screen, her thumb moving rapidly.
"Umm. Okay." They shuffled their feet awkwardly and waited.
Every minute that dragged by, Suraya's stomach knotted itself even
further, until she thought she might throw up from sheer anxiety.
More beeps and boops and one final explosion later, the woman
sighed and put her phone down. "Can I help you?" she asked. The
tone of her voice implied that she was doing them a huge favor by
asking.
"Umm, we booked tickets online?"
"Booking number," the woman said gruffly. "Please," she added
as an afterthought.
Jing fished her phone out of her pocket, and Suraya quickly read
off the string ofletters and numbers as the woman entered them into
her computer.
"Two tickets to Gua Musang, Kelantan?" she asked.
"Yeah."
"Hold on." More tapping, and then the steady screech of an
ancient printer. The woman's eyes finally flicked over the two of
them, and shefrowned slightly. "A little young to be traveling so far
all by yourselves, aren't you? No school today?"
Suraya froze. Beside her, she saw Jing's arm move. "These are
not the droids you're looking for," Jing mumbled, and Suraya quickly
kicked her in the shin. "Ow!"
Suraya fixed her most winning smile on the woman with the pink
headscarf. "Our grandmother is sick, and our mom left us with our
dad and went to take care of her," she said, her mind racing. "But
now, uh. . . Opah is REALLY sick—like, dying and stuff—and our
dad can't take time off, but she really wants to see us, so . . ." She
trailed off.
Jing let out a theatrical sob. "Poor Opah."
The woman had already lost interest. "Whatever. Here you go.
Platform 2." She slid the tickets across the counter and Suraya
grabbed them eagerly. "Just be careful. Don't talk to strangers," she
added as an afterthought.
"We won't. Thank you!" They scampered away as quickly as they
could, before she could ask them any more questions.
Not that they needed to worry. She is playingher game again,
Pink observedonce they were a safe distance away. And she is
losing. She is not very good.
"I wonder if I should have told her the cheat code for that level,"
Jing mused at almost exactly the same time. "Because she really
sucked at that game, man. Oh well. Come on, let's go find platform 2
before she thinks of more questions to ask us."
In their hurry to get away from the disinterested ticket lady, they
didn't notice the plump figure of a man just a few steps away.
On a bench in a corner near the dustbins was the pawang,
watching them intently.